As the banking crisis rocked the continent, European bankers frantically phoned their American counterparts for help — and got nowhere, because no one on the American end spoke French, German, or Spanish.

“I kept getting these calls from some guy speaking in French. I had no idea what the fuck he was saying,” one anonymous American banker reported. “I kept telling him, ‘I’m sorry buddy, I don’t speak French,’ but he just kept talking… It was really frustrating, so I went for lunch.” Another described a German call as “like listening to the lady who cleans my walk up fight the vacuum up the stairs.” European frustration was quotable but untranslated — “Nous sommes dans une crise financière majeure, et ils ne peuvent même pas comprendre le français? C’est ridicule,” said one French banker, in a quote The Bugle admitted it could not read either, appealing to readers: “Here at the Bugle, none of us speak French, German, or Spanish, so please let us know what any of this means.”

American relief efforts were characteristically resourceful. One bank sent a team of translators; lacking Spanish-speaking staff, it canvassed the Bodega on 34th, and one Tommy called in his landscaping crew, “but it turned out they’re Laotian so we couldn’t use them.” A skeptic surveying his own rolodex found only “my nail lady, the pool kid, or that Russian chick I meet in Murray Hill sometimes.” As the crisis rages on, the European bankers’ urgency is clear — even if their calls for help are not.

irl: Published amid the real March 2023 banking crisis — Silicon Valley Bank had collapsed on March 10, and Credit Suisse took an emergency $54B lifeline from the Swiss National Bank on the day this ran. The target here is American monolingualism, not the banks.